


Swift Illuminations

by Reikah



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Bets & Wagers, M/M, Wicked Grace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 20:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9564278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reikah/pseuds/Reikah
Summary: Inspired bythis tumblr postabout M!Hawke's massive beefy arms and Anders's.... less beefy arms, and the likely outcome of an arm-wrestling match.Set sometime before the end of Act 2. Hawke and Anders need to settle a bet (and prove a point). Isabela and Varric are mostly just along for the ride.  "Isabela frowned at the pile and then, accusingly, at Anders. "Someone's holding out," she said."





	

It happened for the first time in the Hanged Man.

Varric was there, shuffling the deck, and Isabela, too - she'd tripped her way into her customary seat at his table, sprawled across it like a lazy cat, and ordered ales for them all on Varric's tab before she even said hello.

"Morning, Isabela," Hawke said.

"It's three in the afternoon," Anders chipped in, squinting at her in the warm, champagne light filtering down in long rays through the stained old windows. Dust danced out in the open, drifting down like feathers to land in his hair; he had taken the chair directly in the path of the sunbeam, claiming he felt the cold. Varric suspected it had rather more to do with _Hawke_ , who was in his own customary seat right beside Anders's, and whose hand had been suspiciously below table-level for most of the last ten minutes. Even now Hawke's bare bicep moved, corded muscle rippling with the unseen manipulation of what Varric suspected was most likely a thumb stroking along a certain feather-wearing mage's thigh, following the seam of the cloth.

(This suspicion came from Varric's tried and true detective skills, of course, and not at all a well-timed sneeze that had bent him lower than normally necessary.)

"Three's a good time to be up," Isabela said, waving Edwina away with a leer. "And an apple too, if you've got one. So! Are we dealing me in?"

Hawke grinned. The smear of blood over his nose wrinkled when he did. It was a familiar sort of grin, in Varric's estimation; Hawke was a big man and a strong man, who knew the value of an appearance especially if the appearance was that of a menacing thug, and thus even his grins were calculated to intimidate - but Isabela just grinned right back. "You know the fee," he said. "Joiner's stake."

" _That_ is extortion. And people say _I'm_ the pirate." With a deeply put-upon sigh, Isabela hoisted her left leg over her right, knee-to-knee, and tugged off her boot, upending her life savings to bounce out over Varric's carpet: six sovereigns, a ship in a bottle, two stiletto blades and an oddly erotic carving of a skeleton climbing a mast, painted in cheap flaking blue.

The skeleton clinked against the other tat in the centre of the table: a broken hoop earring - from Varric, of course - and a half-full bottle of dusty rotgut, from Hawke, the contents of which slooshed with rather too much viscosity to be a good sign. Isabela frowned at the pile and then, accusingly, at Anders. "Someone's holding out," she said.

"I'm not," Anders said, trying and failing to look coquettish by rubbing at his chin with his hand of cards, and succeeded only in accidentally flashing the entire table a glimpse of his seven of serpents (which was, for once, _not_ a particularly ghastly euphemism). "I've already placed my bet."

"Blondie here agreed - in what I can only assume to be a staggering amount of optimism - to arm-wrestle our illustrious leader here," Varric chipped in.

Isabela snorted, eyeing both Hawke's thick, heavy bicep, laden with tattoos sweeping ferociously along the muscle grain, and Anders's rather thinner twigs hidden beneath the stained green satin of his jacket. "Whose idea was that?"

"Mine," Hawke said flatly. "Do you remember the bet we made, six months ago?"

"You were piss drunk," Isabela said. She grinned. It was, Varric thought, altogether too similar a grin to Hawke's. "You were trying to woo Anders with poetry, and, if I remember correctly..." she tapped teasingly at her lip piercing with her thumb, gold eyes aflame with mischief, "The poetry was so awful Varric and I had to set our Hawke And Anders Hookup Clock back two years."

"Turns out that just because you _can_ rhyme 'Anders' with 'gerrymanders', it doesn't mean that you _should_ ," Varric added helpfully. "Speaking as a professional."

Anders snorted. "What would you rhyme my name with, then?"

"Wouldn't even try, Blondie." Varric waved a hand. "Anders? Commanders? Bystanders? Shit, too much work. Stick with 'mage' - you can rhyme that shit with pretty much anything. Mage, stage, cage, rage -"

"- Dragon Age," Isabela added, getting up to open the door for Edwina, who had their drinks on a tray together with a not-yet-rotten apple. "Teenage -"

"I get it," said Hawke.

"Rampage, wind gauge, upstage, engage, minimum wage -"

" _I get it_ ," Hawke said, through gritted teeth. " _At any rate_ , the bet was that if I could beat Anders at a good old-fashioned arm wrestle, he - Anders - would owe me a kiss."

"Just a kiss?" Isabela lifted an eyebrow.

"We didn't agree on where," Anders said. "I didn't want to overwhelm the poor man." 

"And what if you lost the arm wrestle?" Varric asked, the thought having just occurred to him. He took a sip of his ale, which mostly tasted of pigeon and therefore probably represented a kind of upward social mobility amongst Corff's mostly-rodent brew.

"I'd strip for him," said Hawke, waiting until the precise moment Varric went in for the second sip because of _course_ he did.

Anders passed Varric a towel from the hook near the fireplace with which to mop the ale up off the table, and also out of his chest hair. "It's not a _bad_ bet," he said. "Perhaps not as exciting as your junk collection, though I think I have some torn trousers in the clinic I could toss in if you'd rather."

"Oh, don't you _dare_ ," Isabela said, smirking. "I think I'd like to see you and Hawke armwrestle, even if I win. The entertainment factor alone probably outweighs whatever poison Hawke's got in that bottle."

"Homebrewed wine, actually," said Hawke. "I think. Is it still wine if it's made out of Darktown fungus and aged for six months inside a Carta dwarf's wet sock collection?"

Isabela quirked an eyebrow. "Is there any other way to make wine?"

" _Yes_ ," Varric said, emphatically. "Andraste's nipple-tassels. I hate to say it, but I think you two need to meet more people."

"And how could I do that without my bottle of Carta athlete's-foot fungus-wine as a conversation starter?" Isabela tapped two fingers against her ale mug. "Let's just get this over and done with. Deal me in."

"I've got my wrestling bracer on already," Anders said. He was grinning - actually grinning, the skin around his eyes wrinkled into soft laugh-lines, the warm afternoon sun pooling in the happy hollows around his mouth; moving in with Hawke really had agreed with him. "It might _look_ like my normal bracer, but you know what they say - appearances can be deceiving."

"Who says that?" Hawke asked, brow furrowed and eyes fixed on the deck Varric was shuffling.

“I do,” said Anders, firmly.

"In my family, the number one saying was 'it won't get better if you pick it',” Hawke said. “Or ‘Carver, stop trying to ride the dog’.”

"In mine it was 'I'm going to strangle the entire merchant's guild and their little dogs too,'" Varric said amiably. "Bartrand never did play well with others."

"On my ship it's 'do what I say, not what I do,'" Isabela said, fanning out her cards and, brow smooth and expressionless, immediately discarded six of her hand. Varric pushed the deck over toward her, watching very carefully as she drew replacements.

"In my actual house it's mostly 'Sandal, get off that' followed by the sound of breaking Antivan crockery," Hawke said. He threw three cards from his hand and drew two more, and then passed the deck to Anders, who discarded his entire hand; whatever he drew had his eyebrows rise up to his hairline, and Varric grinned to himself. His luck with the deck (and also the Divine of Serpents in his right sleeve) was much better.

Isabela greeted the deck with a purr, fingers caressing the cards' worn backs briefly, and she drew two more cards - and then immediately leaned toward Anders, grinning like a shark.

"Nice Grace Face," Varric muttered.

She ignored this, of course, throwing her hand down - a a winning one, all Divines (including the Divine of Serpents, damn her) and an Empress of Sun. "You owe me an arm wrestle, grumpy," she said, collecting her loot and sneaking at least one of the cards from her hand back into her boot while everyone else was too busy watching the spoils roll across the table. "And you, other grumpy. Do you think this mushroom wine is flammable?"

"I think I wouldn't light a flame too close to someone who _drank_ it, let alone the entire damn bottle," Hawke said. He smirked at Anders, who frowned mulishly at his cards and finally pushed them over toward the deck. They were a miserable lot: every single suit represented, no matches, and the famous song-suit mabari which was functionally useless - Varric's heart almost broke for the guy.

On the other hand he figured he was about to witness the quickest wrestling match in history since the time some bantamweight at the bar decided to punch Erik 'Brick Shit' Housemann over a spilled drink, so he couldn't feel that sorry for Blondie. He had, more or less, gotten himself into this in the first place. And he'd liked that one particular misshapen hoop earring.

"I'm not going to go easy on you just because you're living with me now," said Hawke, elaborately unbuckling his leather glove. Even the back of his hand was ropey with muscle, and when he set his elbow upon the tabletop he did so forcefully enough everyone's ales jumped in place and the potentially hazardous fungal wine-stroke-explosive-grenade rolled three inches closer to Isabela. "I said I'd love you until the day we died, not wimp out on wrestling matches."

Anders's nose wrinkled with what looked to Varric almost like delight. "I wouldn't have you any other way, love," he said, and began unspooling the bandages around his own right bracer; he set them very carefully next to his ale mug, and the bracer itself joined them a second later. His elbow he placed upon the table top with much more care than Hawke.

"Please tell me you didn't actually say that," Varric said to Hawke. "I'm trying to sell a story here - nobody wants to read mushy sap when they can read about you crushing steel with your thighs."

"I've crushed a lot of things with my thighs," Hawke said, and leered at Anders, who just shook his head in fond exasperation and silently mouthed _no_.

His hand - soft, with its long, clever fingers, freckled and suddenly so very small - was all but engulfed in Hawke's beefy palm. Hawke's thumb - thick as Anders's index and middle fingers together - wrapped around the back of his hand, pressing against the knuckles; Varric winced as he watched Blondie's flesh dimple. "You know, Blondie, you could have just kissed him. Not like you don't do enough of that already, we've already seen the marks."

"I made a promise, Varric," Anders said, chirpy and oh-so-righteous. "It's only fair that I keep it."

"Well," said Varric, "If Hawke wrenches a muscle in your wrist throwing you down, I think it's only fair that _he_ be the one to spoon-feed you gruel until you recover."

Anders snorted. "You've never... actually arm-wrestled before, have you?"

Varric eyed Anders's thin, bony wrist, visible where his sleeve had fallen down without the bracer to hold it in place. Isabela nudged him in the side with her elbow. "Three sovereigns on Anders," she said.

"What?"

"Three sovereigns on Anders," Isabela repeated, and took a sip from her ale; wiping the foam mustache off against her shoulder, she met Varric's inquisitive gaze and shrugged. "I like the underdog. Or cat. Whatever."

"Thanks," Anders said, drily.

Varric glanced at her and then at the rather unequal setup ahead of them. Hawke had at least a foot on Anders, both in height and in bicep circumference. "They're both mages," he said, slowly, as he puzzled out the reason behind Isabela's wager; then it struck him like lightning. "Anders, judges' rules - no Justice, or fade nonsense, or any of that."

Anders gave Isabela a betrayed look; she shrugged one shoulder and smiled. “He’s _part of me_ ,” he protested. “You can’t ban Justice - it’s like banning my hand or my foot -”

“I can and I am,” Varric said. “No. Fade. Shit.”

Anders rolled his eyes dramatically, and Isabela shifted in her chair, her head tilted; then she nodded. "Still three sovereigns on Anders," she announced, and tossed her three sovereigns into the centre of the table. After a moment's thought, Varric tossed in a matching number.

"If you lose, Hawke," he said, "You're gonna be buying me dinner all week."

"You _wish_ ," Hawke said. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Anders, who smiled at him beatifically. "Isabela, count us down. No, wait - Varric -"

"We'll both count you down," Varric said, catching Isabela's eye, which was sparkling in a way that had the smarter part of his subconscious waking up to suspicion. "Ready, Rivaini?"

"Always," Isabela purred. "Three -"

"Two," Varric said -

"One -" Anders was _smiling -_

"Go!"

* * *

Afterwards, over the meal Hawke had bought them all of roast pheasant and cottage pie, Varric would inquire for exactly _how long_ Anders had known that Hawke was ticklish, and exactly _when_ he had removed that feather from his pauldron. "It's not the cheating," he explained, "That doesn't bother me, Blondie - with this crowd it's more or less the norm."

"I resemble that remark," Isabela said lazily, picking gristle out of her teeth with her boots crossed on the table. She had spent most of the meal so far just adjusting the feather on her newest hat. It was three foot long and also three sovereigns expensive, and Varric was fairly sure she could use it as a makeshift raft in an emergency, so wide was its brim.

"'Course you do, Rivaini," Varric said, not without affection. "No, but honestly, it's not the cheating - it's the planning you put into it."

Anders, whittling away at his pheasant with a knife and fork and Circle-built manners, merely grinned. "Appearances can be deceiving, my friend," he said, and tapped his fork against his goblet meaningfully. "Hawke, could you pour me some more wine?"

Hawke was slunk so low in his seat only the tips of his naked shoulders could be seen over the table top; at Anders's request he grudgingly pushed back his chair, the legs scraping against the floor, and held out a finger warningly in first Isabela and then Varric's direction. "Don't," was all he said.

"Absolutely," Isabela said, popping a particularly large mushy pea in her mouth and smirking as Hawke rose to his feet - all of Hawke, a frankly eye-watering display that left Varric with some vague concerns for Blondie's health and well-being, but also answered some questions he hadn't known he had viz-a-viz how far down the tattoos went and how much body hair one needed to have before it could be classed as a 'thicket'.

His book, at least, was going to benefit greatly from the whole experience.

"Thanks, love," Anders said, leaning back in his chair as Hawke came around beside him with the wine decanter and began to pour. He was smirking, eyes half-lidded, and Varric abruptly remembered another one of Bartrand's sayings - the one about the cat who had gotten into the cream. He wore the expression well, at least.

Hawke grunted, padding back to his own seat. "Last time I make a bet against you," he muttered.

Anders shifted, leaning his elbow on the table between them; his copper eyes were bright and aglow with affection, something very much like the champagne sunlight in his gaze. "I wouldn't worry," he said, his voice low and rich in a way Varric had never heard from him before, something deep and nameless coiled beneath the surface. "You'll still get your kiss... anywhere you want it."

Hawke snorted, hiding his mouth with his hand; his eyes were soft around the edges, like this had just occurred to him, and he looked suddenly very much like a man who had lost exactly no bets and who had also discovered that life was a grander and greater adventure than he could ever have imagined. He said, "I should probably ask Bodahn to cancel all my appointments for the weekend."

"That would be wise," Anders murmured, mouth twisted in stark triumph, and patted the back of Hawke's huge hand where it clasped the edge of the table, very carefully.

Varric and Isabela exchanged a look. Maybe some parts were better off left out of the history books.

**Author's Note:**

> This was genuinely supposed to be just a short tumblr comment-fic; I don't know how this happened.


End file.
